The most persistent memories will be of Tomorrow’s World presenters in neon jumpsuits wearing unfeasibly large helmets, navigating clunky animated ‘virtual landscapes’.

Fortunately, technology has moved on a long way since then. Refined and renamed, Augmented Reality (AR) has landed as a technology.

Some industries (retail, real estate) have been early adopters. In Financial Services, Augmented Reality has yet to make much of an impact.

However, with the quickening pace of technical development, I believe that in the next 2-3 years AR will go mainstream in Financial Services.

As a result, FS companies need to start thinking now about how they can enhance their businesses with this suite of new functionality.

What is AR?

So let’s get down to business with the obvious question - what is augmented reality?

And more importantly, why does it matter to Financial Services companies? Simply defined, augmented reality is use of different technologies to enhance our view of the real world. (To put that into context – virtual reality was the replacing of reality with an alternative created by technology).

There are several different types of augmented reality. Each one has a different application – and they are each at different levels of development. We will address each in turn – in order of technical maturity:

Surface – the use of interactive touch or motion controlled screens to interact with information

Pattern – the use of real images or code to prompt a response from a digital device

Location & Overlay – the supplementing of pictures from your current location with additional information and placing information alongside images that you are looking at

Outline – creating virtual 3D images with which you can interact

You've got shopping to do,so I'll stop there.

Alex Bray is @Stgilesresident.He cooked for 15 on the 25th and is now available for panto ...